


Facing Fire

by jaystrifes



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Republic City, Spirits, avatar swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27867701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaystrifes/pseuds/jaystrifes
Summary: He was far more comfortable with his native element, or even water or earth, but to win this fight, he needed fire.Written for the ELEMENTAL: Tales of the Four Nations, Vol 2 zine! The Gaang attends an academy in a LoK-adjacent AU; Zuko accidentally sets a dragon tiger spirit on a rampage; and Aang overcomes his fears.
Relationships: Aang & Katara (Avatar), Aang & Zuko (Avatar)
Kudos: 7





	Facing Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This was a collab with the wonderful jannuie (not currently on social media), who provided the amazing art! You can check out the zine [here](https://twitter.com/atlazine1)!

“Go, Aang!”

Katara, Sokka, and Toph cheered from the sidelines as the airbender turned a graceful backwards flip right over his opponent’s head. Both ducked around the enormous boulders used in earthbending training and vaulted over the filled stone troughs used for waterbending. It was hard to see through the dark tint of Zuko’s protective visor, but Katara could easily imagine his face twisted with annoyance as Aang continued to outmaneuver him, leading him in a fruitless chase across the sparring courtyard.

With each strike in a series of fiery punches, Zuko shouted, “Stop – running – from – me!”

Sokka led a chorus of boo’s. Katara herself couldn’t help but take satisfaction in watching Aang frustrate Zuko, after what a jerk he’d been lately.

There was just one problem: this was a firebending duel. Although Aang’s objective was to strategically burn up a parchment tag hanging from Zuko’s back, not overpower him, it seemed he might not be able to do even that. He was far more comfortable with his native element, or even water or earth, but to win this fight, he needed fire.

Zuko had plenty to spare, though, lashing out at Aang with blade-like sweeps of flame and hot-bright orange bursts. At one point, he roared out a huge breath of fire. The attack strayed too near the audience for comfort, making Katara duck backwards and pull Toph with her, singing Sokka’s eyebrows. Sifu Jeong Jeong shouted a warning at Zuko.

Aang continued to neatly dodge the attacks without resorting to airbending, but as he passed by again, she noticed the sweat shining across his forehead arrow, even through his clear face shield. He needed to finish this soon.

Almost in sync with her thoughts, Aang made his move. When Zuko lunged for him, instead of leaping away, he zipped past Zuko’s side. From behind, he swept Zuko’s legs out from under him, and the off-balance Zuko toppled forwards on hands and knees. Before Zuko could right himself, Aang aimed a quick dart of flame at his tag. Katara and the others cheered for Aang’s victory, but then she saw the spark that had jumped the length of Zuko’s protective fire-vest and was starting to spread into the hair at the back of his neck. 

Seeing Aang wide-eyed, transfixed with fear, she jumped to douse Zuko’s neck, bending a whip from her waterskin.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“You’re _welcome_ ,” Sokka said on Katara’s behalf, exchanging a glance with her. “Your whole head would have caught on fire just now! And Katara should’ve let it, to avenge my perfect brows.”

Katara tuned out the rest of his melodramatic speech, frowning as she moved towards Aang. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head and backing away. Tears welled up in his eyes. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Aang, it’s okay, you have nothing to be sorry for,” she said.

“Yeah, he does,” said Zuko, tossing aside his mask. “He cheated. He didn’t kick me off my feet, he used airbending.”

“Young Sifu Zuko is correct,” Jeong Jeong said.

“There’s no way!” Toph argued. “I could sense it through the ground!”

As everyone devolved into bickering, Aang took up his glider and fled the scene. Katara shook Sokka by the arm until he took notice.

“See? Now look what you did,” he said to Zuko. “Come on, Toph, let’s go find him.”

Ignoring Jeong Jeong’s calls to stay for critique, Zuko stormed off. Katara gave pursuit, following him to his motorcycle.

“Hey! You’re not going to apologize?”

“I have nothing to apologize for. It’s not my fault he’s weak.”

“After everything he’s done to try to be your friend—after everything _we’ve_ done—you’re still so…ugh! Aang looks up to you, you know. He has his reasons for being afraid of firebending, he has—” the next word escaped her before she thought it through “—scars. Emotional scars, I mean. He’s just scared he’ll hurt someone!”

“He doesn’t know anything about scars,” Zuko snapped. “And neither do you.”

*

Zuko’s bike skidded to a stop just in time. The downtown side street came to an abrupt end, lined with barriers to keep people from plunging into the mile-wide, overgrown pit around Republic City’s spirit portal.

Maintained by a faction of Air Nomads to keep out exploitative visitors, the unearthly green glow the portal radiated was balanced out by their vibrant yellow and orange presence. When Zuko introduced himself as Fire Lord Iroh’s nephew and heir, a friend of the spirits, they readily welcomed him, allowing him to enter unimpeded.

Briefly, he hesitated. Uncle wasn’t here to guide him right now, but this was the best solution he could come up with on his own. He was going to get through to Aang, one way or another.

Of course, when he stepped through, there were no spirits in plain sight, in the valley or in the mountains nearby. It could never be that easy for him. 

Zuko sighed and began his trek, following the edge of a forest. He’d made up his mind during the ride here, plagued, annoyingly, by Katara’s voice, reminding him that Aang was just scared.

It was difficult to get along with him from the start, when Jeong Jeong decided Zuko was the best junior trainer at the academy to serve as the Avatar’s firebending partner. Aang was like Zuko’s sister: born lucky. And he was modest about it, too, which was somehow worse than Azula’s gloating.

He was like the constant reminder of past failure, burned beneath Zuko’s skin; this unassuming boy was four years younger and already master of three elements, when it had taken Zuko nearly his whole eighteen years just to get the hang of one.

But then, he had never hated Azula, no matter how their father pitted them against each other. And he didn’t hate Aang either—he just wasn’t _good_ at the whole friends thing, and he was frustrated. It was hard to teach someone who wouldn’t stop running away.

A sense of danger prickled at the back of Zuko’s neck, distracting him from his thoughts. He drew his twin blades, just in case, only for one to shoot from his hand, clanking in the talons of a bright bird-like creature.

“Hey!” Zuko shouted, swiping at it with his remaining sword and giving chase. 

It was far faster than him and dodged easily, soaring off towards the mountains, with several long, colorful tail plumes trailing fire behind it.

Wait, _fire_! Maybe fire could help him. He pursued the phoenix-spirit up a long, winding path to a cave, where he found many more of its kind, ethereal glowing shapes in the darkness. And he sensed something else—something much bigger.

Two balls of flame ignited in his fists. The light was just enough for him to make out one enormous paw in front of him, tipped by razor-sharp claws, connected to a scaly orange leg with black stripes winding around it. A pair of eyes slid open, both of them the size of Zuko’s whole body, their pupils reflecting his fire as mere bright pinpricks.

A deep, booming voice rumbled through the cavern. “I believe my _fenghuang_ have brought you to me for a reason.”

The many-tailed bird spirits chirred all at once, startling Zuko. A huge, hot breath extinguished the flames in his hands and knocked him back a pace. With a great inhale, the spirit immediately became visible, its massive body wreathed in a fire of its own. It was like nothing Zuko had ever seen before: a dragon with a tiger’s coloring, its fur-lined face reptilian in shape, set with burning red eyes.

“Tell me, young prince, why have you come?”

*

Aang was just sitting down for dinner with Katara and her family when a frantic knock came at the door. Katara answered it first and made an exasperated sound, which meant one thing: Zuko. Aang wanted to shrink in his chair to avoid facing his firebending teacher, until he caught a snippet of Zuko’s words.

“—a really mad spirit, he left before I could reason with him, and I think he wants, or he said, something about us corrupting bending by teaching all the elements in one place, I don’t know what—”

“What’s going on?” Aang asked, at the same moment an alarmed Sokka said, “The academy!”

Zuko nodded severely. Katara’s eyes were wide with worry. “Sokka, go get Toph and meet us there. Aang, come on, we’re with Zuko.”

“Wait!” said Zuko, breathless. “Bring your fire-vests. You’re going to need them.”

Aang’s mind was still reeling as they geared up and took off. He flew fast on his glider, wind rushing in his ears, while Katara held onto Zuko on the motorcycle. The nervous knot in his gut only twisted tighter as they neared their destination. He knew he was the bridge between the physical world and the spiritual, but he was so new at this, he barely had a handle on the physical! 

At least the spirit wasn’t hard to find, a living conflagration with the trunk of his body coiled around the academy’s central tower and his massive wings splayed, fire blazing along his fur.

Aang landed on the roof, as close as he dared, and said, “Please, stop! We can talk, nobody has to get hurt—just tell me who you are, and what do you want?”

The dragon’s face pulled into a sneer, revealing tiger’s teeth like glistening sabers. “I, Huo Zhu, have witnessed eons of human disrespect for balance and the natural order.”

“Hang on, I’m the Avatar. I’m all about balance!”

“The _Avatar_ is the pinnacle of human arrogance,” Huo Zhu snapped, wisps of flame crackling off his shoulders and grazing past Aang’s face. “The lion turtles once kept the elements separated for a reason, until you came along! It appears you need to be reminded of that.”

Aang tried to argue, but the back of Huo Zhu’s paw smacked into him and sent him tumbling from the roof, his glider rendered useless with fire ripping through its fans. Disoriented and yelling, he windmilled his arms and tried to kick up a gust to catch himself, until he landed safely in someone’s arms. Katara set him down, extinguished his glider with a snake of water from her satchel, and looked up at the enormous spirit, firelight gleaming against her eyes.

“I’ll hold him off,” she said. “Aang, you can’t run away from this anymore. _Tell_ Zuko, and help him fix this, please!”

Aang nodded, swallowing on the acrid tang of smoke. They both ducked as a five-pronged fire blast hurtled towards them from above, only to be blocked by a wall of earth. Toph and Sokka had arrived to make their stand. They bought time for Katara to run to the inner courtyard and make use of the water troughs, as Aang fell back.

Zuko was waiting at the road, mouth agape at the destruction Huo Zhu wreaked on the academy. The spirit’s claws scored the side of the building, tearing through their multi-bender insignia as he roared at Katara, who doused him with a towering wave. It only lasted a moment; he shook himself, and his fur reignited.

“What do we do?” Aang asked, with a shaking edge to his voice.

“I think, if he’s so obsessed with the separation of the elements or whatever, we should turn his own strength against him. Fire.”

An icy shiver crept down Aang’s spine, despite the heat all around. “I…Zuko, last time, there was—” He squeezed his eyes shut, and it played out on the backs of his eyelids like the very night it happened: the fire at the Southern Air Temple, when he had been too eager to learn before he was ready, and burned down a whole dormitory. Almost everyone had been evacuated, except for Gyatso, who stayed behind to save as many as possible.

Maybe Zuko understood something through Aang’s rambling sobs, because his eyes softened a fraction. He gripped Aang by the shoulders and shook him gently.

“Listen to me. I know what it’s like to be afraid of fire, too. But my uncle taught me something—that it isn’t just destruction. It’s life. If you can take control, you can use it the right way this time, and save everyone.”

A shrill scream rang out, and they whipped their heads to see Katara, Sokka, and Toph being lifted into the air by flaming tendrils wrapped around their waists. The roar of Huo Zhu’s laughter shook the whole building.

Aang shook his head. “M-maybe I can figure out the Avatar state, or use the other elements, but—wait, unless… Your new technique, from our match!”

“Breath of fire?” Zuko inhaled deeply to demonstrate, patting his diaphragm. “From within, you build the heat from the stomach and then you let it out.”

“Okay, can we reverse it? Breathe all of Huo Zhu’s fire in ourselves?”

“And then release it safely in another direction?” Zuko frowned, but nodded. “It’s worth a try.”

They ran towards the smoldering academy, Aang’s heart thumping wildly. “Hey!” he shouted up at the spirit, sounding braver than he felt.

Huo Zhu leered over the roof’s edge. “An airbender and a firebender working together? What a shame Ozai did not fulfill his promise to wipe you nomads off the map.”

Aang set his jaw, and Zuko yelled, “The only one getting wiped off the map is you!”

With that, they leapt into action. Aang spread his arms, throwing the wind in every direction and then pulling it back, sucking all the fire towards him with airbending. Facing down an overwhelming wall of yellow-orange flame, he refused to waver this time. He embraced it, taking control to redirect it to Zuko, who breathed it in and tilted his head back, exhaling it with a mighty shout. The fiery pillar burned straight up into the sky, and dispelled itself harmlessly. 

Aang’s friends fell from Huo Zhu’s grasp, and Zuko hurried to check on them. The academy was dark again beneath the moonlight, charred and somewhat worse for the wear, but still standing. Huo Zhu snarled and tried to conjure his fire anew, but Aang stole it away every time, until finally the spirit turned tail and vanished back to his world.

After a moment of quiet disbelief, Aang crowed and threw himself on his friends. “We did it!”

“Did you just master firebending in a day or something?” Toph asked, giving him a playful punch.

“I wouldn’t say he’s mastered it yet,” Zuko grumbled, rolling his eyes.

Katara glowered, opening her mouth to defend Aang, but Aang shook his head and stepped back far enough to give Zuko a Fire National bow. “I still have a lot to learn,” he said. “But I’ve got a great teacher.”

Zuko’s lips quirked up, almost a smile. Grudgingly, he let Aang pull him into the group hug.

**Author's Note:**

> There were so many details in this that I had to cut for the word count, but I hope the general idea of the AU still comes across well enough! That aside, I had a great time writing this, and a million thanks again to jannuie for the incredible art <3 <3


End file.
